ATI 4830 seems very good value

[Zak33]

Lo dudes

Scan has got the 4830 cheap enough to warrant a look today.
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512MB...VI-I-HDTV-HDCP
£90 inc vat and delivery buys an HIS 4830 with 512 mb GDDR3. T remind ya all, the 4830 is a slightly cut down 4850, with 640 cores, not the 800 of the 4850, and slightly slower clock speeds
(core is 575 against 625 and ram is 1800 against 1986)

But pound for pound, at £90 that's a nice nice card.

[DavidM]

http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/#11

[Webby]

Has been £90 on EBuyer for ages

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/151393

Powercolor rather than HIS though, not that it really matters.

You are right though probably the best value card you can get at the moment a couple of them crossfired makes for a very nice system indeed better performance (on the whole) than a GTX260 216 (closer to a GTX280 in some cases) and significantly cheaper, £180 rather than £215. You do need a decent crossfire motherboard though to take full advantage of them.

[Zak33]

tbh, I'm quite tempted to replace my trusty X1900 XT.

[Webby]

Yes I am thinking that after Christmas my 3870 may be retired while I can still get a bit for it on eBay and a nice shiny couple of 4830's may be coming my way perhaps with an upgrade to Phenom II and a nice crossfire MB.

We will have to wait and see what Santa brings me

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yes I am thinking that after Christmas my 3870 may be retired while I can still get a bit for it on eBay and a nice shiny couple of 4830's may be coming my way perhaps with an upgrade to Phenom II and a nice crossfire MB.

We will have to wait and see what Santa brings me

I think that you should wait a bit longer to replace your HD3870!! There are rumours of the RV740 coming out soon:

http://vr-zone.com/articles/ati-rv74....html?doc=6334

Considering it is supposed to be a 40nm chip it means lower power consumption too!! I find that the HD4830 has disappointingly high idle power consumption when compared to the HD3870(around 30 watts more) so I hope that the RV740 has HD4830 like performance but with the low power characteristics of the HD4670!!

Also I think the HD4830 is a tad overpriced!! The HD4850 could be had for just over a £100 a few months ago and this is much faster.

[Webby]

Yeah a few months ago the 4850 could be found for just over £100 now it cant be found for much less than £115, it kind of annoys me when people say well x months ago it was only this much were not living x months ago so its current prices that are important. While £25 is not the end of the world it is still a sizeable difference in percentage terms ~28%. You certainly do not get 28% more performance from a 4850 over the 4830, more like 10%.

Like I said it will all depend on what Santa brings me in no desperate rush to swap out the 3870 but at the moment they still fetch £50+ on ebay give it another generation of cards and it won't be worth selling.

Anyway its all in the future we will just have to wait and see

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I have another rig I could swap the HD3870 into eventually. My main computer is a SFF Shuttle SD37P2 so power consumption and the amount of heat the card produces is important for me. The idle power consumption of the HD4830 is very disappointing for me otherwise I may have bought one already!!

[Webby]

Ah I only have one rig that needs a powerful card, I don't even have a family member to pass it onto as they do not require the power or already have better seems little point putting it in my mums pc so she can write letters and surf the net.

My media PC when it gets built will be based on an IGP so no need for it there either and it would consume to much power for my 120W PSU anyway!

Oh and thanks for the link if the 740 performs as the numbers suggest it should definetly would be worth waiting for and I guess it probably makes more sense to wait until the DDR3 Phenom II are out anyway for a full upgrade rather than a half step. But you never know what Santa may bring

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

My other rig is for running Ubuntu and has an old X1900gt ATM. A HD4830 seems to run Crysis 20% faster than a HD3870. This is around the same speed as a 8800GT. Looks like my HD3870 will be staying a bit longer!!

[Zak33]

the RV740 looks good until we look at GDDR5 ram..and then you gotta worry about prices of the ram. IF enough are made, and plenty of GDDR5 ram is created, we have a hope of a cheap card, but it's unlikely I think. If it gets bolted with GDDR3 then it'll just be a cooler and slightly faster version of whats on offer today.

[Pob255]

Must admit it stack up very well against the 9800gt which it's aimed at, same sort of price and performance.

[Mithrandir]

The 4830 does look good. How does it stack up against the 2900gt (OC'd) ?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The 4830 does look good. How does it stack up against the 2900gt (OC'd) ?

It is faster than a HD3870. The HD3870 was as fast as a 2900XT in most games. The 2900GT only has 240 shaders too as opposed to the 320 in the HD3870 and 2900XT and 640 in the HD4830.

Since the HD4830 is at least 20% faster in Crysis than a HD3870 with AA on I suppose the 2900GT is much slower!!